House of Prince

At the end of 2011 it came to my attention that I was no longer paying close enough attention to our checking account.  We do not have debt other than our mortgage and the occasional low balance on the American Express card I use to buy groceries in bulk from Costco because we drink our metric weight in Caffeine-Free Diet Pepsi once a week and the kids have to be supplied with juice boxes and granola bars on a daily basis.  However, somehow the padding in our checking account disappeared.  It just went away, and one night I went to get cash from the ATM and the ATM told me there were…

…insufficient funds.

??

That has never happened to me.  I haven’t had insufficient funds in my checking account since before I married my sugar daddy Stewart, and even then I knew exactly how much money was in there – or not in there – at any given moment.  I do the bills once or twice a month, and I have a general sense of the balances of all of our accounts, the way a mother has an invisible tracking beam that goes from her brain to the body of her child when they are in a crowded place.  Every so often she must make visual contact, but for the most part it’s like a bat’s radar.

Again, I blame the entropy that Lisa’s death left in her wake.  The sudden disappearance – forever and ever, amen – of such a big person in my life was like an eruption that made the ground underneath me buckle and shift.  I cared about nothing aside from the closeness of my family members, the most basic of necessities, and simply getting from one hour to the next.  Bills and money were but pesky issues that could wait until later.

Months later, as I started to resume control over the parts of my life over which I have always enjoyed control – and I will post about this later, this idea that grief has a shelf-life, or a minimum level of tolerance that the rest of the world will show to the one who is grieving – I realized that our family really needed to adhere to a budget.  By “family” I mean mostly Stewart and myself, but the boys, who are still so young, will have to adjust to it, too.

As a long time fan of Suze Orman, Jean Chatzky, Dave Ramsey, and various “mother on a budget” bloggers over the years, I already knew how I wanted our budget to go.  Stewart was on board too.  It would not be possible without his agreement.  We resolved to start this budget near the end of December, and as that time approached, he reminded me.  And reminded me.  And…reminded me.

So finally I set aside an evening and spent several hours poring over our financial data.  I have kept our books in Quicken since 1997  when I was single and it was just my little checkbook to balance.  My rent was $309.22.  I have kept very detailed records.  I’m geekily proud of the fact that I was able to look up the cost of furniture that we bought shortly after our wedding in 2002.  (Yes, it will be 10 years in June.)

Because of this meticulous record-keeping, I was able to survey our expenditures from 2011 and make a list of averages for every category, from groceries to gas to “recreation” and “subscriptions” and “computer hardware” and “postage and shipping.”  In Quicken you can be as detailed as you’d like.

Quicken has a budget planning function – I am running the 2011 Deluxe version – but I have never found it to be as user-friendly and versatile as a good old Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.  Call me old school, but I can manipulate a spreadsheet and its formulas like it’s 1994.  And I like it.  So my next step was to find an Excel version of Dave Ramsey’s general budget philosophy.  He advises listeners to sit down every month, just before the month and “give  every dollar a name.”  You predict how much is coming in that month, and then decide how you’re going to spend it – before the month begins.  I found this great spreadsheet that someone created that quantifies the worksheets found in his book “Total Money Makeover.”  (The one I found most useful is complete.xls)

Then Stewart and I sat down together to review how much we were spending last year in each category, and to decide how much we would devote to those categories – if any – in the months ahead.  I must confess, this was the hardest part.  I’ve been handling the household accounting for the entire time we’ve been married – even before we were married I started assuming family bookkeeping when I moved in with him once we were engaged.  Every now and then he asks about some expense, but for the most part I operate with autonomy and absolute rule.

That night in December when we hashed out our budget, I bristled when he showed surprise at certain expenditures.  I stood fast when he brought up the dollars I spend on things like waxing and hairdo’s.  (I mean, come on.  A girl’s gotta look good.  Even if I spend most of my days in yoga pants.)  We haggled over costs like the kids’ sports programs, restaurant meals, travel.  And the one extravagance both of us would not give up?  The country club pool.  In a land where it gets up to 105 degrees on a hot summer day, that relief is not a luxury, not unless both of us lose our jobs.

Eventually we agreed on a good dollar limit for each category that we deemed necessary, including savings.  I saved the spreadsheet as “2012 Budget,” and as January progressed, I’ve taken great pleasure in entering every cent we spend.  Stewart and I communicate about our daily expenditures – more or less.  I check our bank account balance online every day.  It’s a little obsessive, but as Ramsey says, it should take us 2 or 3 months to develop a comfortable routine.  I’ve listened to his show for a few years now, and I have heard many couples call in to tell their stories of using a household budget to pay off thousands – even hundreds of thousands – of dollars in debt.  If we are even half that successful, we’ll be back on track.

One of the mostly unexpected benefits of budget planning is that Stewart and I really communicated about our spending, and in doing so we reconnected about our goals for our family.  We strengthened our commitment to me working at home and being available for our children.  We compromised in the right places.  It was nice to reaffirm the values that drew us together in the first place.

The downside of this paradigm shift is that I have to decline invitations to go out to lunch and drinks.  I had expected that, but at the time I had no desire to go out to lunch or drinks.  I didn’t even want to shower or wash my hair, let alone leave the house and socialize with people.  But slowly, oh so slowly, I have been intrigued by invitations and thought I might want to attend.  The free events are more attractive now, although an intimate sit-down with a girlfriend over a bottle of wine sounds heavenly to me after an unintentional 2 month exile.

I did build in a paltry sum for dining out, just for emergencies.  And I included a few bucks for a babysitter in case the stars align and Stewart and I manage to get out for a date night.  But for now the luxury of wanton spending at Baskin Robbins or the country club bar are history.  Being more cognizant of our spending is awesome, and it sucks.  The jury’s still out though.  January is a long month.  Tune in later to see if we hit any of our marks!